The furious debate around the controversial 'feminist' Mary Wollstonecraft statue, explained
Posted 1 day ago by Isobel van Hagen 

Getty
A memorial honouring the groundbreaking English philosopher and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft was 200 years in the making – although very few were actually pleased with how it turned out.

Known as the ‘mother of feminism’, the 18th century writer is perhaps most well-known for her 1790 work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And so a sculpture marking her historical significance was finally unveiled on Tuesday in London, and its creators faced almost immediate criticism on social media.

The new silvery naked sculpture – a product of the 'Mary on The Green' campaign – prompted critics to call it 'sexist', 'insulting' and 'demeaning', asking why it did not directly depict Wollstonecraft and, specifically, why she had been 'reduced to a sex object'.

The uproar comes from a lack of awareness about objectifying representations of women as only 'sexy' bodies, something Wollstonecraft spent her life trying to draw attention to.

Feminist activist and author Caroline Criado-Perez, who played a key role in the campaign to erect a statue of women's suffragist Millicent Fawcett, called the artwork “a colossal waste” and “disrespectful to Wollstonecraft herself”.

Writer Tracy King, who was also involved in the Millicent Fawcett campaign, agreed: “It’s a shocking waste of an opportunity that can’t be undone. But hey, tits!”

Others were quick to note that famous male authors are never represented without clothes: “I’ve seen many statues of male writers, rights activists and philosophers and I can’t remember any of them being bare-assed.” One person said.

The artist Maggi Hambling defended her decision to depict Wollstonecraft without clothing, saying that people had "missed the point".

She explained the statue was meant to represent “everywoman” and clothes would have restricted her to a time and place, according to the Evening Standard.

But she added: “As far as I know, she’s more or less the shape we’d all like to be.” It hasn't gone down well

Bee Rowlatt, chairwoman of the 'Mary on the Green' campaign, also came to the statue’s defence saying: "This work is an attempt to celebrate her contribution to society with something that goes beyond the Victorian traditions of putting people on pedestals."

Prominent social commentator Mona Eltahawy refused this notion completely, saying: “Nudity is not the issue. What is being conveyed and for whose gaze is. Why, after years of so few statues of women, is the naked female form of statues being erected for & about women?”

Even so, some were in fact happy about the memorial, calling it 'epic' and 'radical'.

Historian Dr Fern Riddell explained her positive perspective on Twitter:

"I love it because to me it’s a massive combination of themes, I love the water like a raging wave, I like the mechanical aspect of the figure, it reminds me of how women are created in images that never match their thoughts," she wrote

But mostly, people were just confused to the point of hilarity.

As writer Hannah Jane Parkinson said, "I am genuinely crying with laughter at the new Hambling statue of Mary Wollstonecraft. The disrespect...I don't even know where to start."

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https://www.indy100.com/article/mary-wollstonecraft-maggi-hambling-statue-twitter-debate-9724857

And still, the debate rages on...

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Caitlin Moran

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Nov 10

If you want to make a naked statue that represents "every woman", in tribute to Wollstonecraft, make it eg: a naked statue of Wollstonecraft dying, at 38, in childbirth, as so many women did back then - ending her revolutionary work. THAT would make me think, and cry.

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Research project reveals the original pigments of 2,000-year-old inscriptions at the temple of Esna

by University of Tübingen

The temple of Esna, seen from the east (spring 2019). Credit: Ahmed Amin

More than 200 years after the rediscovery of an Egyptian temple, a German-Egyptian research team has uncovered the original colors of inscriptions that are around 2,000 years old. Freed from thick layers of soot and dirt, the reliefs and inscriptions can now be admired again in bright colors. The project, led by Egyptologist Professor Christian Leitz, also discovered new inscriptions that reveal the ancient Egyptian names of constellations for the first time. The restoration work is a cooperation between the Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies (IANES) at the University of Tübingen and the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.


The temple is in Esna, 60 kilometers south of Luxor in Egypt. Only the vestibule (called the pronaos) remains, but it is complete. At 37 meters long, 20 meters wide and 15 meters high, the sandstone structure was placed in front of the actual temple building under the Roman Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD) and probably eclipsed it. The roof is supported by 24 columns, the capitals of the 18 free-standing columns are decorated with different plant motifs. "In Egyptian temple architecture this is an absolute exception," says Tübingen Egyptologist Daniel von Recklinghausen.

The work on the elaborate decorations probably took up to 200 years. The temple of Esna is famous for its astronomical ceiling and especially for the hieroglyphic inscriptions. They are considered to be the most recent coherent hieroglyphic text corpus that has been preserved today and which de-scribes the religious ideas of the time and the cult events at the site.

Its location in the middle of the city center probably contributed to the fact that the vestibule was preserved and was not used as a quarry for building materials as other ancient edifices were during the industrialization of Egypt. Indeed, the temple had become part of the modern city. Houses and shacks were built directly against some of its walls, in other places it protruded from a mountain of rubble, as can be seen on postcards from the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the first half of the 19th century, the hall served temporarily as a warehouse for cotton.

A restored column capital (spring 2019) shows the decoration in color. Credit: Ahmed Amin

Detail of a frieze (autumn 2019). The cartouche contains the name of Hadrian, framed by the local god Khnum (left) and the solar god Behedeti (right). Credit: Ahmed Amin

A column abacus before restoration. Credit: Ahmed Amin

A column abacus after restoration. Credit: Ahmed Amin

The restoration work shows that under many layers the original colors are preserved.

 Credit: Ahmed Emam

Egyptian constellations on the ceiling of the temple of Esna, inscriptions as yet unknown. Far right the east wind in the form of a scarab beetle with a ram’s head. Credit: Ahmed Amin

Representation of a constellation in form of a mummy. Credit: Ahmed Amin

As early as in Napoleon's time, the pronaos attracted attention in expert circles, as it was considered an ideal example of ancient Egyptian temple architecture. The real wealth, the inscriptions, was recognized by the French Egyptologist Serge Sauneron (1927-1976), who pushed ahead with the excavation of the temple and published the inscriptions in full. But without the original colors—Sauneron could not recognize them under the layers of soot and bird excrement.

Now the layers have been removed and the temple looks in part as it may have done some 2,000 years ago. In addition, it now offers new approaches for Egyptology research, says Christian Leitz, "The hieroglyphics that Sauneron explored were often only very roughly chiseled out, the details only applied by painting them in color. This means that only preliminary versions of the inscriptions had been researched. Only now do we get a picture of the final version." In the area of the astronomical ceiling, many inscriptions were not executed in relief, but only painted in ink. "They were previously undetected under the soot and are now being exposed piece by piece. Here we have found, for example, the names of ancient Egyptian constellations, which were previously completely unknown," says Leitz.


Since 2018, the two Tübingen researchers have been working with Egyptian authorities to uncover, preserve and document the paint layers. Even during the coronavirus pandemic, the work is being continued by an Egyptian team of 15 restorers and a chief conservator from the Egyptian Ministry. At regular intervals, the results are documented photographically in documentation campaigns. At the University of Tübingen, the finds are evaluated in terms of content and made available to the public via publications. Cooperation partners on the Egyptian side are Dr. Hisham El-Leithy, Mohamed Saad, Ahmed Amin, Mustafa Ahmed, Ahmed Emam. The project is supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Ancient Egypt Foundation and the Santander Bank.


Explore further Blocks found in Egypt bear name of famed pharaoh's builder

More information: For more information, see www.esna-projekt-tuebingen.de
Provided by University of Tübingen

30,000-year-old twin remains found in ancient grave in Austria

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Burial 1 with the skeletal remains of two infants recovered as block in 2005 (ind1 on the left, ind2 on the right). Photograph: Natural History Museum Vienna; modified. Credit: Communications Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8

A team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in Austria, the U.S. and Portugal has identified the remains of two infants found in an ancient grave in Austria as identical twin babies. In their paper published in the journal Communications Biology, the group describes their study of the remains and the surrounding artifacts and what they learned about the burial.


Back in 2005, archeologists discovered the remains of three very young people buried in a grave at the Krems-Wachtberg, dig site in Austria—all three had been dated to approximately 30,000 years ago. Work at the site has revealed the presence of an ancient settlement called Gravettian. In this new effort, the researchers have studied the remains of the three infants and analyzed other artifacts found in the gravesite with them.

Two of the infants were buried under approximately five meters of soil. They were close to one another beneath a mammoth shoulder bone that had been cut and shaved to serve as a coffin lid. The lid had protected the remains, leaving them in very good condition. A DNA analysis showed that the two infants (both boys) were newly born identical twin babies. The first had died shortly after birth, while the second died approximately 50 days later. The time between deaths indicated that the gravesite had been reopened for use when the second baby died. The third infant, buried a small distance away and without a cover, was in poor condition, but the researchers were able to retrieve DNA material that showed it to be a cousin of the other two infants. The cause of the infants' deaths is unknown.

The grave itself was oval-shaped and the babies had been placed as if spooning—they had been laid on a bed of red ochre. The researchers also found 53 beads made of mammoth ivory lined up inside the grave, suggesting that they had been strung together. Because the beads showed no signs of wear, the researchers assumed they had been strung for the burial. The researchers also found three perforated mollusk shells in the grave and one fox incisor. The remains of the twins represent the oldest known monozygotic twins ever found.

a The twin’s bodies (individual 1 and 2) in the grave pit of Burial 1. b, c Mammoth ivory beads and their arrangement on individual 1’s pelvis. d Adornment of Individual 2 consisting of a perforated fox incisor (Vulpes sp.) and three perforated molluscs (Theodoxus sp.). e Ivory pin from Burial 2 (individual 3) (find numbers: c Ivory bead WA-18158; d molluscs (from top to bottom) WA-151565, WA-151561, WA-151564, fox incisor WA-151558; e ivory pin WA-37552). Photographs: OREA, Austrian Academy of Sciences. Graph: R. Thomas. Credit: Communications Biology (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8


Explore further Remains dug from Japan mass grave suggest epidemic in 1800s
More information: Maria Teschler-Nicola et al. Ancient DNA reveals monozygotic newborn twins from the Upper Palaeolithic, Communications Biology (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s42003-020-01372-8
Journal information: Communications Biology



© 2020 Science X Network

Possible thousand-kilometer-long river running deep below Greenland's ice sheet

by Hokkaido University

The suggested valley and possible river flowing from the deep interior of Greenland to Petermann Fjord deep below Greenland's ice sheet (500 meters below sea level). (Christopher Chambers et al, The Cryosphere, November 12, 2020). Credit: Christopher Chambers et al, The Cryosphere, November 12, 2020.

Computational models suggest that melting water originating in the deep interior of Greenland could flow the entire length of a subglacial valley and exit at Petermann Fjord, along the northern coast of the island. Updating ice sheet models with this open valley could provide additional insight for future climate change predictions.


Radar surveys have previously mapped Greenland's bedrock buried beneath two to three thousand meters of ice. Mathematical models were used to fill in the gaps in survey data and infer bedrock depths. The surveys revealed the long valley, but suggested it was segmented, preventing water from flowing freely through it. However, the peaks breaking the valley into segments only show up in areas where the mathematical modeling was used to fill in missing data, so could not be real.

Christopher Chambers and Ralf Greve, scientists at Hokkaido University's Institute of Low Temperature Science, wanted to explore what might happen if the valley is open and melting increases at an area deep in Greenland's interior known for melting. Collaborating with researchers at the University of Oslo, they ran numerous simulations to compare water dynamics in northern Greenland with and without valley segmentation.

The results, recently published in Cryosphere, show a dramatic change in how water melting at the base of the ice sheet would flow, if the valley is indeed open. A distinct subglacial watercourse runs all the way from the melting site to Petermann Fjord, which is located more than 1,000 kilometers away on the northern coast of Greenland. The watercourse only appears when valley segmentation is removed; there are no other major changes to the landscape or water dynamics.

"The results are consistent with a long subglacial river," Chambers says, "but considerable uncertainty remains. For example, we don't know how much water, if any, is available to flow along the valley, and if it does indeed exit at Petermann Fjord or is refrozen, or escapes the valley, along the way."

If water is flowing, the model suggests it could traverse the whole length of the valley because the valley is relatively flat, similar to a riverbed. This suggests no parts of the ice sheet form a physical blockade. The simulations also suggested that there was more water flow towards the fjord with a level valley base set at 500 meters below sea level than when set at 100 meters below. In addition, when melting is increased only in the deep interior at a known region of basal melting, the simulated discharge is increased down the entire length of the valley only when the valley is unblocked. This suggests that a quite finely tuned relationship between the valley form and overlying ice can allow a very long down-valley water pathway to develop.

"Additional radar surveys are needed to confirm the simulations are accurate," says Greve, who has been developing the model used in the study, called Simulation Code for Polythermal Ice Sheets (SICOPOLIS). "This could introduce a fundamentally different hydrological system for the Greenland ice sheet. The correct simulation of such a long subglacial hydrological system could be important for accurate future ice sheet simulations under a changing climate."


Explore further Researchers discover more than 50 lakes beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet
More information: Christopher Chambers et al. Possible impacts of a 1000 km long hypothetical subglacial river valley towards Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland, The Cryosphere (2020). DOI: 10.5194/tc-14-3747-2020
Provided by Hokkaido University

Study reveals how to improve natural gas production in shale

by Los Alamos National Laboratory

A Los Alamos study reveals how production pressures can be optimized to efficiently recover natural gas. Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory

A new hydrocarbon study contradicts conventional wisdom about how methane is trapped in rock, revealing a new strategy to more easily access the valuable energy resource.

"The most challenging issue facing the shale energy industry is the very low hydrocarbon recovery rates: less than 10 percent for oil and 20 percent for gas. Our study yielded new insights into the fundamental mechanisms governing hydrocarbon transport within shale nanopores," said Hongwu Xu, an author from Los Alamos National Laboratory's Earth and Environmental Sciences Division. "The results will ultimately help develop better pressure management strategies for enhancing unconventional hydrocarbon recovery."

Most of U.S. natural gas is hidden deep within shale reservoirs. Low shale porosity and permeability make recovering natural gas in tight reservoirs challenging, especially in the late stage of well life. The pores are miniscule—typically less than five nanometers—and poorly understood. Understanding the hydrocarbon retention mechanisms deep underground is critical to increase methane recovering efficiency. Pressure management is a cheap and effective tool available to control production efficiency that can be readily adjusted during well operation—but the study's multi-institution research team discovered a trade-off.

This team, including the lead author, Chelsea Neil, also of Los Alamos, integrated molecular dynamics simulations with novel in situ high-pressure small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to examine methane behavior in Marcellus shale in the Appalachian basin, the nation's largest natural gas field, to better understand gas transport and recovery as pressure is modified to extract the gas. The investigation focused on interactions between methane and the organic content (kerogen) in rock that stores a majority of hydrocarbons.

The study's findings indicate that while high pressures are beneficial for methane recovery from larger pores, dense gas is trapped in smaller, common shale nanopores due to kerogen deformation. For the first time, they present experimental evidence that this deformation exists and proposed a methane-releasing pressure range that significantly impacts methane recovery. These insights help optimize strategies to boost natural gas production as well as better understand fluid mechanics.

Methane behavior was compared during two pressure cycles with peak pressures of 3000 psi and 6000 psi, as it was previously believed that increasing pressure from injected fluids into fractures would increase gas recovery. The team discovered that unexpected methane behavior occurrs in very small but prevalent nanopores in the kerogen: the pore uptake of methane was elastic up to the lower peak pressure, but became plastic and irreversible at 6,000 psi, trapping dense methane clusters that developed in the sub-2 nanometer pore, which encompass 90 percent of the measured shale porosity.

Led by Los Alamos, the multi-institution study was published in Nature's new Communications Earth & Environment journal this week. Partners include the New Mexico Consortium, University of Maryland, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center for Neutron Research.


Explore further

Unintended methane release from UK shale gas site equivalent to 142 trans-Atlantic flights

More information: Chelsea W. Neil et al, Reduced methane recovery at high pressure due to methane trapping in shale nanopores, Communications Earth & Environment (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s43247-020-00047-w

Provided by Los Alamos National Laboratory

Azerbaijan Celebrates 'Victory,' Armenia In Crisis After Nagorno-Karabakh Deal
November 10, 2020  By Ron Synovitz

People wave the national flag and hold portraits of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his father and predecessor Heydar as they celebrate in the streets of Baku on November 10.

Still euphoric over the capture of a vital city from Armenian forces, Azerbaijanis celebrated on the streets of Baku after a Russian-brokered deal was signed late on November 9 aimed at ending the war over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Meanwhile Yerevan, the Armenian capital, was plunged into a political crisis over the truce.

Angry crowds stormed the Armenian parliament and ransacked government buildings after Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian announced the deal on his Facebook page.

As demonstrators also broke into Pashinian's official residence, there was speculation the Armenian leader would be toppled and that the truce, along with the huge battlefield losses in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, could bring pro-Moscow Armenian nationalists back into power.

Cutting Its Losses?

Pashinian called the decision to sign the truce "inexpressibly painful."

He said he did so after "an in-depth analysis of the military situation" a day after Azerbaijani forces seized the nearby fortress city of Shushi, known as Susa in Azeri.

That ancient town is positioned on a mountaintop that overlooks Nagorno-Karabakh's main city of Stepanakert -- giving Azerbaijani artillery and rocket launchers an undeniable advantage in the battle for the regional capital and another likely conquest in a war Azerbaijan has been winning.

"This is not a victory, but there will be no defeat until you admit you are defeated," Pashinian said. "We will never admit that we are defeated and this should be the beginning of our period of national unity and revival."

The truce deal calls for Armenian forces to vacate the territory they still control within seven Azerbaijani regions around Nagorno-Karabakh that they have occupied since a war between the two countries was frozen by a shaky cease-fire in 1994.

Azerbaijan's forces will keep control over all the occupied territory they have recaptured since the war reignited on September 27, including Susa.



Baku has agreed to allow the deployment of Russian forces as peacekeepers. The Russian positions will include the route of a new road to be built through Azerbaijan's Lachin district.

That route, known as "the new Lachin corridor," is to pass through a 5-kilometer-wide strip of southwestern Azerbaijan, bypassing Susa, in order to establish a direct road link between Armenia and Stepanakert.

The Russian deployments with troops and tanks were already under way on November 10.

Meanwhile, Pashinian also agreed to allow a new transit corridor through southern Armenia that will give Baku a connection to its landlocked, southwestern exclave of Naxcivan.

Russian peacekeepers will also be deployed in that transit corridor.

Turkish Role?

The deal makes a vague reference to a Turkish presence at a "joint cease-fire monitoring center" -- causing confusion over the role Turkish forces may play in future peacekeeping operations.

Fuad Shahbazov, a research analyst at the Baku-based Center for Strategic Communications, told RFE/RL that the Turkish reference was necessary for Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to agree to allow Russian peacekeepers on Azerbaijani soil. "Azerbaijan agreed to Russian peacekeepers only on the condition that Turkish soldiers also will be on the ground," he said. "We're still wondering about the details -- what Turkish forces will be doing and where exactly they’ll be stationed."

"I don't know if there will be a large number of Turkish troops," Shahbazov continued. "Russia will be clearly unhappy if there is a large number of Turkish forces."

"But public opinion about Russia is really bad in Azerbaijan," he said. "There's a confidence problem between Azerbaijan and Russia. So Turkish forces, for Azerbaijanis, are seen as a real guarantor of stability."

Shahbazov added that he would not be surprised if Baku insisted that it has agreed to Russian peacekeepers "only on the condition that Turkish soldiers also are represented here."

But Aliyev and Azerbaijanis may be quickly disappointed on that issue.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on November 10 there had been no agreement on deploying any Turkish peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. He said the Turkish military would help staff the joint monitoring center.

Risk For Aliyev?

Azerbaijan's opposition parties had varying views of the cease-fire agreement.

Arif Hacili, the head of the Musavat Party, bemoaned the fact that no consultations were held with political parties, members of parliament, or Azerbaijani citizens.

Hacili said people only learned about the agreement at 4 a.m. in the morning. He called the timing of the announcement "unacceptable" and said the truce violated the constitution because foreign troops are being deployed in Azerbaijan without parliament's approval.

Political analyst Rauf Mirkadirov called November 10 "a black day" in Azerbaijan's history. He said history will not view Aliyev as the country's "savior" because he is allowing Russian troops to establish a presence in the country -- something Baku has avoided since Azerbaijan achieved independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and Russian troops left the following year.

Seymur Hazi, deputy chairman of the opposition Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, said he supported the army and considered the war to have been won. "But the party is concerned about the return of the Russian Army to the region after a long period," he said, adding that he believes Russian deployments pose a threat to Azerbaijan's independence.

SEE ALSO:
Russian Peacekeepers Deploy To Nagorno-Karabakh After Truce As Political Crisis Hits Armenia

Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan who co-chaired negotiations over the conflict as Washington's envoy in the OSCE's Minsk Group, agreed that Russian peacekeepers on Azerbaijani territory were "a negative" for Baku. "But overall, this is a huge victory for Aliyev," he told RFE/RL. "Azerbaijan regains control of all of its seven [occupied] territories and [parts of] Nagorno-Karabakh with no change in the status of Karabakh. It's the biggest diplomatic victory in the history of an independent Azerbaijan."

Ending the war without an assault on Stepanakert is a smart move for Baku, Bryza said. "There are a lot of people with war fever in Azerbaijan" who wanted its forces to take back all of Nagorno-Karabakh from the ethnic Armenian separatists, he said.

"That would be unwise," Bryza said. "You don't gain anything. All you do is risk killing a lot of civilians."

"Azerbaijan already won the war when it recaptured Susa over the weekend," he continued. "It controls access to Stepanakert. There is nothing more to be gained on the ground militarily, but everything to be lost politically," arguing that Azerbaijan would be seen as "an international pariah" if it continued to advance on Stepanakert after the Armenian forces were largely defeated.

Crisis In Yerevan

Regarding the political situation in Yerevan, Bryza said the Kremlin would be happy if Pashinian was forced from power as a result of the conflict. "Armenia lost the war and this is a huge strategic defeat for them," he said. "It's probably the worst thing that's happened to Armenia since the Bolsheviks took over and, maybe, since 1915."

Pashinian "had a chance to have a much better deal," but rejected previously agreed "basic principles" contained in three previous cease-fire agreements, Bryza said.

Richard Giragosian, the head of the Center for Regional Studies in Yerevan, told RFE/RL that Pashinian "had no choice."

"To be honest...after losing Susa we had to accept the reality -- if we do not accept this agreement dictated by Russia, we may lose the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh," he said. "We had no alternative. By signing this agreement we saved the people [living and fighting] there, the rest of [the territory of] Nagorno-Karabakh, and stopped the war. These were important achievements."


"For better or for worse, I think this is Pashinian's swan song," Bryza said. "He had a popular support base but it was not organized. It was not consolidated into a political force that could counter the extreme nationalists and the entrenched business interests" dominating Armenian politics.

"Russia knew that if and when Armenia lost this war, Pashinian would be teetering, ready to fall off the cliff, and his political career would effectively be over," he added.

Arkady Dubnov, a political scientist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Current Time on November 10 that there was one bright spot for ethnic Armenians in Stepanakert.

With the exception of Susa, Dubnov said, the Armenians had managed to "preserve the core of Nagorno-Karabakh" in the form it had been when its de facto leaders in Stepanakert declared independence nearly three decades ago.
With reporting from Yerevan and Baku by RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services

As Guns Fall Silent In Nagorno-Karabakh, There's One Winner In The Conflict You Might Not Expect

November 10, 2020 By Mike Eckel

An Azerbaijani soldier with a national flag rides a horse in Ganca, 

Azerbaijan's second-largest city, near the border with Armenia, on November 10.

Who’s the big winner in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace deal?

Russia.

As smoke clears from the battlefields around Nagorno-Karabakh and the ink is drying on the three-page peace deal aimed at halting the worst fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan in decades, one thing seems increasingly clear:

The Kremlin has won.

At the very least, Moscow has snatched what looks like a victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s further increased its clout in a region where a flare-up of fighting between two former Soviet republics and a more robust Turkish role threatened to shrink the Kremlin's influence.

“Russia did well in this,” said Matthew Bryza, a former co-chair of the Minsk Group, a long-standing diplomatic effort to resolve the conflict. “Putin has dominated. He’s the kingmaker in the situation.”

Yes, the Minsk Group is dead. Seems so."
-- Matthew Bryza, former Minsk Group co-chair

At least 2,000 soldiers and civilians, likely more, have died since September 27, when the latest round of fighting erupted over Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, mountainous territory that is legally part of Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenians for 26 years.

In the years since the 1994 cease-fire that ended all-out war, Azerbaijani and Armenian forces have regularly skirmished, exchanging sniper fire and mortar rounds, but stopped short of another full-on conflict.

The region’s unresolved status put it in a category known to experts as a “frozen conflict”-- hot spots around the former Soviet Union where Russia plays a central role, both perpetuating and mitigating the tensions.

Others, with varying levels of tension and violence, include Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions and Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region. And then there’s eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed forces hold parts of two provinces and a simmering war has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

As in some of the other places, Russia sought to deploy troops on the ground in or near Nagorno-Karabakh as peacekeepers, but had previously failed on that front. That was due in part to a lack of confidence in Yerevan and Baku that Moscow was an honest broker.



Russia has substantial economic ties with both countries; Azerbaijan is a major purchaser of Russian weaponry.

But Moscow’s most prominent diplomatic effort has been through the Minsk Group, an initiative headed by France, Russia, and the United States under the aegis of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The subtext to the Minsk Group was that Western nations -- NATO allies France and the United States -- had a strategic role to play in a region that Moscow still considers part of its historic sphere of influence.

With the new peace deal, Russia gets its troops on the ground -- and potentially pushes Paris and Washington out of the picture once and for all.

And according to the text published by the Kremlin, as well as remarks from Putin’s spokesman, Turkish peacekeepers will not be deploying, something that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev suggested would be happening.

Outrage Erupts In Armenia After Nagorno-Karabakh Deal Announced

“Yes, the Minsk Group is dead. Seems so,” Bryza, who also served as U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan from 2010-12, told RFE/RL. “Russia has filled the vacuum. As did Turkey, for that matter.”

Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center in Yerevan, said the deal was very much a Russian one, a fact that further imperiled the Minsk Group.

“The terms of this new agreement grant Russia the most important of Moscow’s objectives: a dominant military presence on the ground,” Giragosian said.

“The prior lack of any direct military presence in Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the most distinctive aspects of the Karabakh conflict, standing in stark contrast to every other such conflict within the former Soviet space. And that absence was a long-standing irritant for Moscow,” he told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

The deal cements major battlefield gains by Azerbaijan’s forces and will leave Baku in control of about 40 percent of Nagorno-Karabakh itself, as well as nearly all of the surrounding territory that had long been held by Armenian forces.

Prior to the outbreak that started in late September, Armenian-backed forces controlled the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh, plus parts of the seven surrounding districts -- territory that collectively amounted to around 13 percent of Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan Captures Key City In Nagorno-Karabakh

Now, the deal means Azerbaijan will control a sizable chunk of the territory it lost in the early 1990s.

Moscow also achieved another objective, Giragosian said: pressure on Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.

Pashinian’s independent foreign policy streak has vexed the Kremlin since he came to power in 2018 in a popular uprising known as the Velvet Revolution -- the kind of political change that makes Moscow uneasy.

"This enhanced Russian leverage will not only keep Armenia well within the Russian orbit, it will only further limit Armenia's options and orientation in seeking closer relations with the West," Giragosian said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Yerevan in October 2019. “This enhanced Russian leverage will...keep Armenia well within the Russian orbit," one analyst says.

Some analysts said there were potential pitfalls for Russia.

Mark Galeotti, a London-based political observer and expert on Russian security agencies, said Russia deploying its troops to the region isn’t necessarily a slam-dunk win for Moscow.

“This is an additional burden on its military and treasury. It does bake a role for itself into the geopolitics of the region, to be sure, but this was a part of the world in which it was already meant to be dominant?” he wrote in an opinion first published in The Moscow Times. “When you have to escalate your commitment to retain your position, that does not seem a sign of progress so much as laboring to hold back decline.”

Steven Mann, who was a co-chair of the Minsk Group in the mid-2000s and retired as a U.S. diplomat in 2009, said the clear winner in his mind is Azerbaijan, given its battlefield victories.

As for Russia, its leading role in cementing the peace deal was no surprise, and the deployment of peacekeepers not a major coup for Moscow, given its long-standing dominance in the region, he said.

“Russia has always been the predominant military power, so I don’t think the deployment of the peacekeepers changes that overarching fact,” Mann told RFE/RL.

“I reject the idea that Russia has any special rights over its former republics. They’re independent countries. They have the right to choose their own policies,” he said. “But frankly, if you wanted peacekeepers on the ground, it’s hard to see where they would have come from but Russia.”

Russian military planes with peacekeepers on board are seen after landing at Erebuni Airport outside Yerevan on November 10.

Carey Cavanaugh, a former U.S. diplomat who helped organize the 2001 talks in Key West, Florida, where the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents came close to reaching a resolution, said the deal was a clear victory for Azerbaijan, given its military gains. But he disagreed that Russia was a clear winner, suggesting that Moscow had been forced by the circumstances to find a way to avert a major escalation.

The danger that Moscow had faced, Cavanaugh said, was a continued fight by Azerbaijan, which could have threatened Armenia and potentially sparked desperate military acts -- for example, a missile attack on Baku, or targeting the Caspian-to-Mediterranean oil pipeline -- that would then have sucked Russia and Turkey into a deeper conflict.

The deal was a way “to staunch the bloodletting,” he told RFE/RL. “They had to stop it from going any further, over the precipice, where it would have been ‘desperate-times-call-for-desperate measures’.”

And while the Pashinian government’s policies may have irked Moscow, Aliyev has been more careful, said Aleksandr Baunov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“Among the former Soviet states, Azerbaijan has always been an example of how to follow a foreign policy that is entirely independent from Russia, while maintaining a good relationship with Moscow and Putin,” he wrote in an analysis published on November 8.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev gestures as he addresses the nation in Baku

 on November 9.

“This example is also important for Russia itself, as it shows that good relations with Moscow don’t have to come at the cost of submission or signing up for Russia-led integration projects,” Baunov said.

One of the most important Russian-led integration projects throughout the former Soviet Union has been the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Moscow-led alliance with a mutual defense provision similar to that of NATO’s Article Five.

Armenia is a member. Azerbaijan is not.

But the peace deal may hand Baku gains without making it more subservient to Russia -- even though it will have Russian troops on its territory.

Whatever its potential downsides for the Kremlin, the deal “in many ways addresses core Russian interests in the conflict, and is perhaps the best outcome (at least in short term) Moscow could get out of the situation,” Aleksandr Gabuyev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center, wrote on Twitter.

Mike Eckelis a senior correspondent in Prague, where he reports on developments in Russia, Ukraine, and around the former Soviet Union, as well as news involving cybercrime and money laundering. Before joining RFE/RL in 2015, he worked for the Associated Press in Moscow. He has also reported and edited for The Christian Science Monitor, Al Jazeera America, Voice of America, and the Vladivostok News.